


The Ballad of a Man Who Loved

by GraarPlacemat



Series: Niner, Niner [3]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Cowboys & Cowgirls, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Sex, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Murder Sandwich - briefly, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Verbal Abuse, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-06 22:14:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3150197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraarPlacemat/pseuds/GraarPlacemat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This here’s the ballad of a man who loved<br/>A boy who ran<br/>who sang<br/>who fell<br/>who ran<br/>who watched<br/>who swore<br/>A man who ran and ran, again and again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason, I just really enjoy writing angsty cowherding AUs! Soo, here's the latest installment of Niner, Niner AU, featuring Wash as the protagonist! As of now, it's looking like this'll be six or seven chapters, similar to Niner, Niner. In terms of ships, it's kinda all over the place - there'll be a little norkington, a short bout of murder sandwich, and, eventually, tuckington. Woohoo! Anyway, thank you for reading, I hope you like it!! :)  
> EDIT: Oh! I keep forgetting to mention, since I'm very much a writer inspired by music, that the themesong for this fic is "Still Young" by Neon Trees. Go listen to it!!

_This here’s the ballad of a man who loved  
A boy who ran_   
_who sang_   
_who fell_   
_who ran_   
_who watched_   
_who swore_   
_A man who ran and ran, again and again._

 

“You can’t go.”

The boy kicked the dirt. “I gotta,” he muttered, not for the first time.

“You don’t. You can’t. What am I gonna do without you?”

“Ma’am caught me with your brother. I gotta go or I’m gonna make us all look awful bad.”

“Can’t I come, too?”

“Your ma’am wouldn’t like it.”

“Our ma’ams don’t care one way or another, David. They neither of them came to see you off anyway. And you could protect me, David. We’d make it, me n’ you. We’d make it fine.”

A tear landed on the ground between them, staining it. Neither the boy or the girl would ever admit to it being theirs.

“You gotta write me, David.”

“I will.”

“You hafta.”

“I swear I will, Connie.”

“You have my address?”

“Yeah.”

The boy was a liar. But it was okay. He’d had it memorized since they were six, and she knew.

“I’m gonna miss you bad, David.”

“Me, too, Connie.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boy who sang   
> Sang songs of hope  
> of loyalty  
> of devotion  
> of happiness  
> of friendship  
> The man sings only of lost love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Two!!!! This chapter is a whole heck of a lot longer than standard Niner, Niner fare(~ 2500 words) and I have even more events planned for later chapters, so I'm gonna say right here and now that chapters may be a bit slower for this than they were for Niner, Niner. Anyway! This chapter features some major Norkington, but also warnings for blood, death, and homophobic slurs.

_The boy who sang  
Sang songs of hope_   
_of loyalty_   
_of devotion_   
_of happiness_   
_of friendship_   
_The man sings only of lost love._

_-_

The boy never arrived at his uncle’s. He was midway there, at a train stop halfway to Chicago, when he overheard a train conductor call out, “Boarding for Oklahoma! Three-day train ride to Blood Gulch, all aboard!”

He knew Blood Gulch. At the very least, he knew  _of_  it, because he and Connie had fantasized about it all their lives. It was on the northern edge of the open range. It was flooded with single men without any purpose, taking to the trails because they had nowhere else to go.

Just like him.

He pushed through the crowd to the ticket booth, and found that the small pittance his destitute family had given him was just enough to change his ticket.

He hoped Connie wouldn’t mind sending her letters to a different address.

-

Blood Gulch was dusty in a way that his home in Connecticut never was. The dust was embedded in the tracks, in the buildings, in the very core of the town and in his bones from the minute he stepped onto the train platform, which was much smaller than the ones in the East. He liked it. It felt raw and new, like him.

“Hey, kid.”

The boy jumped and twisted around to see a tall, imposing man appraising him. “Yessir?”

“How old are ya?”

His heart sank a little. “Seventeen,” he mumbled, too scared to tell anything but the truth.

“That ain’t hardly old enough to be venturing out to the West all on yer lonesome. Are you staying with anybody?”

He stammered, unsure of how to respond, until he felt a solid, grounding hand on his shoulder.

“He’s with me, sir,” chirped a voice, and the boy turned his head.

His skin was tan from dust, sun, and natural tendency. He was something like forty years old, and his hair was long, drawn back in a low ponytail. The boy had never seen him in his life, but somehow he knew that the help the man was silently offering here had no strings attached.

He may not have known who the man was, but the other man clearly did. His eyes narrowed. “Butch.”

“And a good day to you, too, sir! Now, if you please, me and my nephew here will be on our way. Don’t you know, he’s never ridden a horse a day in his life, and we need to start teaching him quite as soon as possible.”

Without pausing for any argument, without even giving the boy himself enough time to ruminate on the fact that “Butch” and himself looked nothing like relatives, the man spun on his heel and ushered the boy down the steps to the street.

“Uh, sir -”

“Please, call me Butch.”

“Butch -”

“We can talk when we’re out of earshot.”

“I don’t think I am who you think I am.”

“Hush.”

Finally giving up, he allowed the man to steer him off the main road, into the narrow street between a tailor’s shop and a butchery.

With a glance back toward the road, Butch began. “Alright, buddy, you’re probably not gonna want to stick with me fer too long, or they’ll start thinking you’re a fairy, but -”

“I am a fairy,” the boy admitted.

Butch, for the first time, frowned. “I hope you’re not that willing to admit it to everyone else. That can be a dangerous thing to be, sonny.”

“I know all that, Butch, sir. All that’s why my ma’am, she sent me to my uncle, n’ I hopped trains to get here.”

Butch nodded. “Well, I did get that feeling from you, the kicked-out feeling, and I’m not often wrong.” He leaned back against the wall of the building. “What didja think you’d be doing when you got down here, sonny?”

The boy paused to think. “I guess,” he ventured, “I guess I was thinkin’ I’d get me a horse, n’ I’d go on trail with somebody.” As he spoke the words, he began to falter. “It’s… I guess it wasn’t really the best of ideas. I don’t really have the money. N’ you were right, I never rode a horse in my life.”

The man gave him an appraising sort of look. “You’re a skinny kid.”

“I just grew a whole lot. N’ I dint have much money fer food on the train.”

“Tell you what, sonny. Me, I’m a trail rider. I’ve got a group I ride with, and we just lost a man. Got trampled by his own horse. He was from Georgia, about your size, and he was awful skinny, and we still have his horse. Nasty old horse, sonny.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “You mean, you’d -?”

“You could ride on the back of another rider’s horse ‘til you got used to it, then you could take on Old Nasty. But you gotta keep in mind, son, we’re a very talented bunch. We can’t take just anybody.”

“Oh, please, sir! Imma fast learner, I swear I am!”

Butch gave him a kind smile. “We’ll just see how fast you are, Rookie Old Boy.”

-

Excluding Butch, there were four other men in the group that called themselves the Freelancers.

There was a beast of a man, who slept in a hotel room all on his lonesome and the others called Big Man. Rookie Boy didn’t hear him talk much that first night, but when he did, it came out as a low, deep-throated growl. He was harmless, Butch assured him, but the boy still had his reservations.

There was Reggie, another older man like Butch who slept in the same room as him. Rookie Boy was startled to hear that he had a pronounced British accent, and later to learn that he and Butch had been the original Freelancers, and that they’d picked up the others in much the same way as Rookie Boy.

And there was Northerner Daniel, who roomed with another Freelancer called Yank. They were both nice enough - North in a smoother, calmer, more relaxed way, while Yank was flirtatious and jovial - but he didn’t see or hear much of them until, late that night, they came back from whatever errand Butch had sent them out on and began to make some very obscene noises in the room adjacent to Rookie’s.

He didn’t mind it, so much. He wouldn’t have been able to sleep, anyway, what with the excitement of being away from home and a day away from being on the trails amidst men that were, in a very real way, just like him.

-

“You’d better hold on tighter, Rookie,” Yank bid him as he positioned himself on his horse, just in front of the boy. “I’m a fast, hard rider and I’m certainly not slowing down for you.” He twisted around and gave the boy a wink with his good eye.

“Don’t patronize him, Yankee,” Northerner Daniel chastised gently, bringing his own horse parallel to theirs. He gave Rookie Boy a small, warm smile. “I'm sure you’re nervous enough already, aren’t you?”

Rookie swallowed thickly and, unsure how else to respond, shrugged and followed Yank’s advice. It was pretty hot, down here in Oklahoma, and in spite of the new, lighter clothes Butch had purchased for him earlier that morning, the proximity between himself and Yank was making him sweat - and the fact that he was on a horse for the very first time in his life didn’t help the anxiety, either.

Yank’s voice took on a more serious, though no less friendly, tone as he turned back to face his front. “Really, though, we don’t have a very strict schedule on the way down, so if you want me to slow down or stop, I can tell the others to wait up for us down South and just go at our own pace. I don’t wanna give you overload or anything, okay? Just let me know.”

“Thanks, Yank,” Rookie stammered, glancing down at the ground. It felt so far away.

“Would you feel better with someone else? Or if I was behind you instead?”

Rookie Boy contemplated this. “No, sir, I don’t think so. I’m thinking I gotta just go at it with what I got.”

He felt Yank’s shoulders rise and fall as he laughed aloud. “That’s the spirit, Rookie Old Boy.”

-

Their trail guide was a very private man, and clearly quite uncomfortable with the affection that most of the Freelancers demonstrated toward one another, so when the fire went out and the Freelancers went to sleep, he went off by himself to set up his sleeping area. Rookie Boy, unsure himself what to do, figured he’d follow suit.

But his absence didn’t go unnoticed, and maybe half an hour after he’d lain down, he heard footsteps in the dirt. He looked up, and it was Northerner Daniel.

The man sat himself next to Rookie Boy and leaned back on his hands. “Rough day, huh?” he asked, quite conversationally.

Rookie Boy looked up at him. His features, the hair and the shoulders and the impressively high cheekbones were ringed in silver from the gibbous moon. “I dunno. It weren’t all so bad.”

Northerner Daniel turned his gaze down to him. He smiled, steadily, and told him, “You don’t have to sleep all the way over here. We don’t bite. In fact, most of us have been in your shoes before.”

“Yeah,” Rookie Boy rasped. “Butch told me.”

“I’m pretty new, myself. Next to you, I’m the latest addition.”

“Really? But you’re…”

“Twenty-eight. Took me a bit longer to make it down here than most.”

They sat - and lay - in silence for a while. Rookie Boy listened to North breathe, and tried to match the pace with his own breathing.

More footsteps. A groggy voice grumbled, “North, get back here. I’m not conditioned to sleep without you snoring directly in my ear.”

“Sit down, Yank. Sky’s beautiful tonight.”

There was a pause, and then more footsteps. Yank collapsed into the dirt on Rookie Boy’s other side. “Howdy,” he said.

Rookie Boy, once again, was at a loss for words. Finally, he replied, “This here sky’s different from where I’m from.”

“Really?” Northerner Daniel said, and squinted upward. “It’s not too different. Where’d you say you’re from?”

“Connecticut.”

“It’s a little bit off from there,” Yank concurred, and reached to point upward. “See, you just need to find your way. There’s the North Star. It’s just closer to the horizon, down here.”

“And if you have that, you have Ursa,” North added, tracing it with his own finger. “You can’t really see Draco that well, but he’s there.”

“And that right there is the Great Celestial Manhood.”

North let his hand drop into the dirt. “ _Yank_ ,” he said, but there was laughter behind his voice.

“Where’d you hear about the Great Celestial Manhood from?”

“Old joke with Delaney,” Yank explained, and didn’t say who Delaney was. Instead, he stared at the sky for another moment. North began to murmur something, but Yank cut him off. “I’m tired. Are you coming to bed with the rest of us, or not?”

And he did.

-

Stargazing with Yank and North became a nightly phenomenon. Sometimes they’d quietly converse until they all fell asleep, or just gaze upward in silence. As they became more comfortable with one another, North began to let Rookie use his arm as a pillow, and Wash began to let Yank rest his head on his stomach.

None of it changed when North softly kissed the crown of Rookie Boy’s head, not in actual substance, but Rookie still felt like his entire life, his entire existence, had taken on new meaning.

-

He continued on bonding with the Freelancers until he was legally a man(though still a boy at heart), until he was taller than Yank, until Old Nasty was nothing more than an occasional annoyance, until he and they felt that he’d always been there, always been one of them.

Until a woman named Mex came into their lives, until he heard and overheard things that changed everything he thought he knew about North.

He walked quietly back from the stream, glancing back to make sure he hadn’t been seen. When he got back and Yank asked the question he knew he’d have to answer, he replied, “Yeah, they’re okay, they’ll be back soon.”

But he looked at Yank longer than he should have, wondering what secrets he had yet to learn about his other love, and Yank’s face dropped into a decidedly un-Yank-like expression.

North did come back, though, and he was steadfast and unflappable and kind like always, and he smiled at everyone and shrugged off the tidings of concern. “It’s alright,” he told them all, “It’s in the past. I’m okay.”

Rookie Boy looked at Mex, and Mex looked back at him.

-

“What did you think of Mex?” Butch asked him as they set up boarding spaces for the horses.

Rookie Boy thought back. Yank didn’t.

“She was great! Probably the best trail guide we’ve ever had, I’d say. Really felt like she belonged there.”

“I agree. Whaddaya say I invite her back?”

“That sounds great. In fact, ask her if she’d stay with us. It’d be nice to have a competent trail guide on our side.”

“Sure thing, Yank.”

And Butch walked away, and Yank and Rookie Boy were alone together, hanging up saddles and brushing their steeds. And Rookie Boy thought back to the question he’d wanted to ask since he’d found out about North.

“Yank?”

“Hmm?”

“Who’s Delaney?”

Yank didn’t answer. He started humming. And then singing. And he abandoned his brush and started dancing, and beckoned Rookie Boy over to join him.

-

A couple nights later, he sat with Big Man in the saloon, waiting on the rest of the Freelancers and conversing quietly with his friend.

“D’you come from the trails?”

They ignored the question, which had been posed by a drunken stranger, and continued chatting.

“Are you Freelancers?”

Big Man sent him a glare which would have sent anyone else running.

“Bet yer Freelancers. Big buncha faggots. Didja hear?” he turned to one of his companions, who was snickering derisively. “All them cattleherds, they’re alla buncha faggots. All of ‘em, all of ‘em fuckin’ each other. Every single one.”

Big Man turned to face him. Rookie Boy was frozen.

“‘F this place were any good at all, they’d alla bin locked up ages ago. They’d’a bin eatin’ each other’s asses in prison. What’re these faggots doin’ in the open?”

“Big Man,” Rookie Boy whispered, even as his audience was standing up.

The stranger wasn’t deterred. He laughed. “Big Man? Calledja Big Man. Who’s this, yer little pixie?” He lunged toward Rookie, and Big Man hit him. And hit him.

Reggie was there, and North was there, and Butch and Yank and Rookie too, grabbing, screaming, pleading, desperately trying to get Big Man to stop, even as blood sprayed their faces and the tables and chairs.

-

And they lost their way.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boy fell  
> and boy,  
> did he  
> fall  
> hard.  
> The man would never have made such a mistake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is so emotionally taxing, writing this series. Golly gosh. Anyway! Here's chapter three. We've got some warnings here for violence, homophobic slurs, suicide, and death overall. I apologize in advance. ^^;

_The boy fell  
and boy,_   
_did he_   
_fall_   
_hard._   
_The man would never have made such a mistake._

-

“ _This_ ,” Reggie spat, “is why we can’t just waltz into saloons like anybody else, Butch. I don’t know how many times I have told you -”

“Reggie, look, there’s a lot of factors in play -”

“Absolutely not! We can’t just assume everything will be fine, because it won’t be! Or have you forgotten the last time?!”

“That was years ago, Reg!”

“And look at me now,” Yank spoke up, “I’m fine, Reg, one eye down, but I’m fine.”

“ _A man is dead!_ ”

“‘S my fault,” Big Man rumbled. His head was cradled in his hands. “‘S all my fault.”

“I disagree, chap,” Reggie seethed, and he was staring Butch down with an intensity that very few, even among their number, had known him capable of. “I disagree. I say, this all could have been prevented if we had kept our wits about us and stayed in the motel instead of gallivanting about the town.”

“There’s no fault in wanting to live like normal people once in a while,” Butch sighed, one hand draped in front of his eyes, shielding him from the gravity of the situation.

“Terribly sorry to be the one to tell you this, but  _we aren’t normal people_. We never have been, or else we wouldn’t be out here, sleeping in the sand with only each other for company. We aren’t normal people, and  _this_  is what happens when we try to live like them.” He gestured at Yank - in particular, his left eye - for emphasis.

“It’s true,” Northerner Daniel muttered, and Yank turned sharply towards him with a look of reproach on his face. “Men like us are better off not trying to be normal. It only ever ends in…” He trailed off, but Rookie Boy saw the point he was trying to make.

“Stop,” Yank announced, shaking his head. “Stop it.  _Stop._  We’re allowed to be happy. We’re allowed to live our lives the way we want them.”

“It’s not our fault,” Butch agreed, and sent a tired look Reggie’s way. “It’s not anybody’s fault.”

Big Man stood abruptly, opening his mouth wide to make a retort, and that’s when the gunshot sounded and they all scrambled for their horses. Rookie Boy could hear shouts of “It’s him! It’s him!” sound from further up the slope as he launched himself onto Old Nasty’s back.

“This is what comes of letting your guard down!” he heard Reggie bellow, presumably at Butch. Another gun went off, closer this time and Rookie Boy turned to see North standing next to his horse, firing back at the attackers.

Their eyes met, and North shouted something incoherent that sounded vaguely like _run._

-

“This is my fault,” he whispered.

“It’s not,” Yank retorted, louder than he probably should have. North didn’t say anything. The two of them were lying about six feet away from one another, with Rookie Boy directly in between them.

“Big Man was trying to -”

North interrupted him. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s -”

“Yours?” Yank cut in, propping himself up on his elbows to look over Rookie’s body at North. “Because you were too much of a _faggot_  to shoot Big Man instead of letting them take him? Yeah, I agree.”

North didn’t say anything. Rookie Boy tried to see his face, but he was curled on his side, facing away from them.

He looked at Yank instead. He took in the anger and disgust twisting the features that were normally so relaxed, so cheerful. “Yank,” he tried.

Then, something happened that made them both stop.

North sniffled and turned to face them. His face was stained with tears.

Yank didn’t say anything for a moment. And then he sighed, and he edged closer, stopping when he was at Rookie Boy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, North,” he rasped, and reached out.

North looked at the hand for a moment, and everything about him, Rookie could see, was pain. His eyes, and his shoulders, and even the ground beneath him. All of it.

But he took Yank’s hand, and he came closer and cuddled up to Rookie Boy quite as closely as ever he could.

Just before he fell asleep, Rookie Boy heard him whisper, “I’m sorry, Dana.”

-

It was weeks later, and Yank was kicking - the dirt, their supplies, himself. And then he was curled on the ground, sobbing, and then he was up and at it again.

“They couldn’t have told me,” he said, again and again. “They couldn’t have fucking told me.”

Butch and Reggie were gone, with nothing but a note telling the younger men not to look for them in their wake.

“I traveled with them seven years,” Yank griped, kicking a bush. “Like fathers to me. They couldn’t have even  _told_  me.”

North and Rookie watched these proceedings in silence. North had his arm around Rookie Boy’s shoulder, and every so often he’d give it a little squeeze.

At long last, Yank trailed back to them. He was sweaty and dirty and panting. He plunked down next to them and laid his head on Rookie Boy’s shoulder.

“What now?” he asked, perfectly casual.

“I dunno,” Rookie admitted.

“Me neither,” North said.

Yank gazed out over the landscape. “I’m tired of the trails,” he sighed.

“We could head North. Or Northwest. Find a place of our own,” Rookie provided.

“That sounds… okay.” Yank murmured. “What do you think, North?”

“Me?”

“Yeah,” Yank said.

“Yeah,” Rookie echoed.

Rookie could feel, with North’s arm around him, North breathing. Even a faint trace of his heartbeat, he could feel. He felt him breathing, in, out, in, out, for a long time. It caught him off-guard when North inhaled deeply and began to speak.

“I’ve always wanted to see the ocean,” he mused.

-

“Yank?”

“Hmm?”

“You awake?”

“Yeah. Be quiet, I don’t wanna wake North up.”

“Should we go somewhere else?”

Yank looked down at the space in between the two of them, where North’s head lay at chest-level. It was strange - even as his waking persona had remained the same, had continued on being the paternal, calm figure they’d both known for so long, his sleeping habits had strayed into realms nothing less than childlike. He murmured in his sleep almost constantly, and he woke up several times a night, aggravatedly blathering nonsense about whatever nightmare he’d had. Yank and Rookie Boy learned quickly that these symptoms were alleviated slightly when they allowed North to sleep in between them. They reasoned, out of North’s earshot, that it helped him feel safe.

“I don’t want him to wake up alone in case he has a nightmare. We’ll just be quiet.”

“Okay.”

“What did you want to talk about?”

Rookie Boy felt a little heat lighting up his face. “It’s kinda stupid.”

“That’s okay. You’re always kind of stupid.”

He suppressed a laugh. “Hey,” he said, instead.

“Sorry. Anyway, go ahead.”

“He’s Daniel. I’m David. Two years I known you, I never heard  _your_  real name, Yank.”

Yank laughed for real, but only as silently as he could manage. “Really? That’s what you wanted to know?”

“I was just curious.”

He shook his head. “It never really mattered, honestly.”

“Your name?”

“No. Nobody ever called me by it anyway.”

“What’d they call you, then?”

“Typical fare. Faggot. Pansy. The like.”

“Really?”

“It never really seemed to matter, that I liked women the same way I liked men. I was still different.”

“How’d they ever know?”

Yank gave him a sad, sad smile.

“Delaney,” he said simply.

-

“Look, North!” Rookie Boy cried, grinning widely. “It’s the ocean.”

And then it happened.

-

He stayed on that cliff for hours upon hours. For the first thirty minutes or so, he was searching desperately for a way down to the shore, to see if, somehow, miraculously, he could save them.

And then he just sat down, several feet from the edge, and screamed and cried until the full moon was hanging in the sky above him. He screamed and screamed and cried every last trace of Rookie Boy away, until all that was left was a scared, tired, numb, shell.

A nineteen-year-old boy with three horses and saddlebags and two ghosts haunting him, haunting him, and himself.

And memories. The memories were there, too, and he clung to them as he packed everything away. Every so often, he would stop, and he would close his eyes to make sure he remembered their faces. When he was ready to go, he lay in the dirt for a while to imagine them the way they’d always been - him, with his head on North’s arm and Yank, with his head on his stomach, and the three of them stargazing just like always.

But it wasn’t him. That wasn’t him anymore. That wasn’t him just like how North and Yank weren’t him. He told himself this, but still waited until dawn and still thought of them, North and Yank and Rookie Boy, while he roped up the horses and started back to Blood Gulch.

It was funny, because the idea that he could’ve jumped off after them didn’t occur to him until he was already halfway home.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Run, little boy.  
> Run from your future  
> and cradle your past  
> like it’s all you have left.  
> The man will just have to wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hallo! I'm still sick, but I managed to get this out. (AO3 followers, sorry for it being posted early ^^;) This chapter contains Murder Sandwich, murder, thievery, abusive language, and Felix being a butt. I apologize in advance.

_Run, little boy.  
Run from your future_   
_and cradle your past_   
_like it’s all you have left._   
_The man will just have to wait._

-

As the boy rode back, he rode on Yank’s horse, a tall dapple grey the man had lovingly referred to as Locksmith. He explained it to himself that he’d be selling North’s horse and Old Nasty because they were both getting on in years, and he’d need a dependable ride. He also liked it because riding Locksmith reminded him of an inexperienced rider who sat behind Yank on this very horse so long ago.

He was alone with his thoughts, so he thought a lot on the way back to town.

Mostly, he thought of Connie.

Two years had gone by, he realized, and he’d never sent her a letter. He’d never even given an explanation as to why correspondence would be so difficult. He’d forgotten all about her the minute he’d met that man on the train platform.

When he pictured her, he still remembered her face, and also her address. He could remember all the wonderful times they’d had together as they’d grown up. But remembering made him remember Connie’s brother, and because he remembered his first lover he of course remembered the other two.

So he filed away that train of thought and told himself that the minute he got back into town and sold off the spare belongings he’d accumulated, he would send Connie a letter.

-

He was almost finished making the transaction with the horse dealer when the two men walked in. It took mere seconds to notice the correlation.

The tall, calm, and serious one standing next to the jolly, boisterous, and friendly one. Like night and day, or North and Yank. Never mind that they looked nothing the same - he could see it in their demeanor, in the pace at which they entered the stables.

“D’you know those two?” the horse dealer asked, cutting into his thoughts. He was handing the boy a stack of Greenbacks and looking closely, curiously at him. “Might explain what you’re doing with two spare horses, I suppose.”

“Uh, no, sir, I don’t,” the boy finally replied, closing his hand around the money, “Who’re them?”

“Nobody you’d want to know, son,” the man scoffed, and turned away.

Probably trail riders, then. Or homosexuals. Or, the boy reflected, both.

“Hey,” he spoke up, and the two men looked at him. “I… I saw the both of you, walkin’ in, n’ I was wond’rin’ -”

“Oh, listen, Locus,” the shorter one snickered, “That kid talks like an idiot.”

He felt heat rushing to his face. “I done always talked like this.”

“Then it’s a wonder if anyone ever took you seriously. Did they, ever?”

“Felix,” the other one - Locus - lectured, “We’re not here to make fun of the locals.”

It was true. They really were just like those other two. The boy felt himself breathing, felt his heart beating against the inside of his chest. It was like they were here, all over again.

“Oh, come  _on,_  Locus,” Felix whined, “Let me just have a little fun with this rookie.”

“I’m no rookie,” the boy spoke up. “I been ridin’ the trails with the Freelancers two years now.”

The two men gave him a lingering look, and then turned to each other.

“Freelancers?” Felix said.

His voice was hungry.

-

Felix explained to the boy that he and Locus were recovery workers.

“Fellas figure they can get to towns South, or West, or North or East of here all on their own, and they end up lost. So their families hire us - you know, folks with decent knowledge of the areas around - to go out and find ‘em. Most of the time, they’re dead already, so we just bring back their horses and supplies, and we make ourselves a little cash. Plain and simple.”

“You find ‘em dead?”

“Oh, yeah,” Felix assured him, grinning, “Or, you know, most of the way there already. There’s a  _lot_  of dangerous people out there in the wilderness, you know.”

-

He rode with them for quite a while, helping them on their escapades. He was very rarely the first one to find one of the missing men, and because Locus and Felix and himself rode very far apart, his first indication that something had been found was often a gunshot or two.

“A bunch of scumbags were rooting his corpse,” Felix would explain, re-affixing his watch to his wrist. “I had to scare them off with my pistol.”

“I dint know you had a watch.”

“It wasn’t always mine, kid. You understand, I’m sure.”

“Locksmith weren’t always my horse.”

“See? There you go.”

“It  _wasn’t_  always your horse,” Locus corrected as he walked up from behind the boy. “And stop calling it by name. It is an animal, a mere possession. There is no need for it to have a name.”

-

Locus didn’t like cuddling with people in his sleep, and Felix would allow it for only a few minutes before he would push the boy off. It was okay, though. He still slept in between them, and he still watched the stars until he drifted off.

-

One morning, after a couple months of recovery missions with Locus and Felix, he woke up alone in a Blood Gulch motel. As he blearily packed his things, he found that a large sum of money was missing from his wallet, and his gun was nowhere to be found.

When he got downstairs and went to hand back his room key, the clerk read off a message from Felix explaining that they’d had an emergency recovery to perform, and they were sorry to have left him behind. They could meet up at the same motel in a week.

He frowned, but nodded, and decided that he could probably run one mission in that space of time, and went to get his horse.

He didn’t replace the pistol, though. There wasn’t enough money left in his wallet for that.

-

He showed up a week later, but Felix and Locus didn’t. Now, when he lay down at night to remember things, the memories of them and of Yank and North scrambled up together. He could remember North correcting his grammar, now, and Felix accidentally mentioning his old friend Delaney.

He kept rescuing people, and when their families asked his name to thank him, he just shrugged, so they called him Recovery.

-

Two and a half years later, he was abruptly awoken by a gunshot ringing through the night.

He scrambled to his feet, cursing himself for never replacing his pistol, and in the light of the full moon he saw the scene in front of him.

The man he’d been in the process of returning home was dead from a bullet wound through the head, and standing above him was a familiar face.

“Felix?” he whispered, and the man’s eyes were on him. Those eyes widened.

“Kid?” he answered, and suddenly he was smiling and opening his arms. “Oh, boy, I never thought I’d see you again!”

It was a hug. He was being hugged.

There was Locus, standing on the ridge above them. Recovery waved numbly, and Locus nodded his head and began to approach.

“You just shot the guy I was rescuing,” he said numbly.

Felix just laughed and backed away. “Oh, come on. Like  _you've_  never done it before.”

“I - what?”

More laughter.

“I don’t understand a single word you’re saying,” Recovery said.

“Your grammar is much better, now,” Locus observed, arriving at his side.

“I had some help from the people I took home. Why is he laughing so much?”

“The idea -” Felix choked out, “- that it never even -  _occurred_  to you -” he renewed his fits of hysterics.

“We tend to make more money if we pawn off what we can rather than return the package in one piece,” Locus explained, sending a disgusted look Felix’s way, “Some of us find more joy in this than others.”

It took another minute of listening to Felix laugh for it all to click. “You two are murderers,” he said.

Felix finally composed himself, but he was still grinning. “‘ _You two are murderers,_ ’” he mocked, “You sound almost as stupid saying that as you did when we first met.”

He couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it before.

Well, that’s okay, he told himself. North was a murderer, too. He killed his own sister.

But then he looked at Felix, grinning down at the man he’d just killed, and Locus, already rooting through the corpse’s belongings, and realized that they were different.

North had regretted what he’d done. He’d only done it because he’d been consumed with grief, himself, and he saw the error in his ways. He spent his entire life trying to move on from it, trying to make something new and different from the man who’d had his life ripped in two. He’d been consumed by guilt, but at least he wasn’t  _only_  a murderer in the end.

These two?

All they would ever be were killers.

He backed away, slowly, and Locus and Felix were so wrapped up in extracting bounty that they didn’t notice. Locksmith was waiting for him, ready, and he mounted the horse and rode swiftly away, even as he heard his own pistol firing behind him.

-

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I couldn’t find your husband,” he lied, staring down at his own hands.

There was a moment of hesitation, and then her shaky, fearful voice saying, “Locus and Felix were right about you.”

He looked up at her in shock.

“Th-they brought me his watch,” she told him, staring him in the eye, still shaking. “They told me it was all you’d left on him.”

And he understood. “I’m sorry,” he told her, and she closed the door.

He stood there for a few empty moments, and then he slowly walked back to Yank’s horse.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That boy will grow to be an amazing man someday.  
> They watch him in mild interest  
> and he watches them in idolatry.  
> A self-made man couldn’t care less.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am still sick and computers still hate me, BUT!!! We're looping back to the original Niner, Niner a bit with this one, so I'm happy to have this universe's title character around for this chapter. This is shorter than I envisioned it, but I am physically ill and don't really feel as if I'm capable of writing more coherently right now, so I do hope it'll suffice. Enjoy! (AO3 users, once again, sorry for early posting)

_That boy will grow to be an amazing man someday.  
They watch him in mild interest_   
_and he watches them in idolatry._   
_A self-made man couldn’t care less._

-

The boy spent the following months never quite having a plan for where he would end up next. He wandered, avoided towns where he knew they knew who he was, and because he had so few options left, he occasionally stole to get by - money, or food, or clothing. He didn’t kill for any of it, and he didn’t take it from those who looked like they couldn’t live without it because he knew that was just as bad.

Any thoughts of Connie or of Felix and Locus were fleeting, now. Now, he lived for thoughts and memories of those two men that had loved him more than anyone else, save each other.

And for a year and a half, he sustained himself exclusively on those two small luxuries - stolen articles and lost memories.

-

It was a sleepless night like any other, up until the moment it wasn’t.

He was lying on his back, watching the stars and remembering the physical things: resting his head on Northerner Daniel’s arm, having Yankee’s head on his stomach, the incredible friction sparked between three lustful bodies on those spare nights in the motel, the warm pressure of North’s final, soft press of lips to his forehead before he launched himself off that cliff.

The tension and frantic thrashing as he held Yank back from following their older lover.

_I can help him, Rookie. Just let me go, he’s still alive, I just know it, just let me go._

“You won’t be doin’ him any favors, Yank,” he whispered, echoing another boy’s words from so long ago. “He dint even wanna be alive no more, Yank. Last six weeks, he dint wanna be alive no more.”

_I see him! I can see him! He’s down there, he’s waiting for me, I can see him!_

“You ain’t even lookin’, Yank,” he told the air, “Ain’t no way you kin see him, when you ain’t even lookin’.”

And then Yank’s final words, and then sobbing on the cliff’s edge for hours upon hours.

Yank was twenty-five that day, twenty-three when they met. Was he really twenty-three, already? Was he really Yank’s age? Impossible. He was still just a boy.

There came the steady crunch of feet in the dry sand of summer. It brought to him another, more distant memory, of another sleepless night. If he didn’t look, the approaching stranger was North, coming to tell him that he didn’t have to sleep all the way out here.

“Hey. You okay?”

The voice wasn’t deep enough. A woman, it was. That was a surprise.

“Hey. Are you sleeping or dead?”

“Neither,” he called back, frustrated at her interruption, “Leave me alone.”

“Are you dying, then? I can help.”

“Do you mean, help me die, or help me live?” he asked, because he wasn’t entirely sure himself which he would prefer.

“Whichever. I’m flexible.”

Nice sense of humor, he acknowledged silently. He found himself a little curious, so he propped himself up on his elbows and took a look at the woman. He took in the wild hair, the dirt-streaked face, the dress. And then he scrambled to his feet.

“What in the -” he gasped, half convinced that his memories had finally escalated to full-on hallucinations, “Mex? Is that you?”

He saw the brief moment of confusion give way to astonishment. “Oh, my god! Rookie Boy!” She laughed, and he found that it was contagious.

“It’s been a long time since I heard someone call me that.” He found himself opening his arms despite himself, still laughing. “God, I never thought I’d be seeing you again. C’mere.”

And he hugged her, and she hugged back, and something in that gesture made him hurt inside. He squeezed her close to him, closer than he’d ever thought he’d want her, and she let him. It came to him, suddenly, that she had a reason for it. When they finally separated, she was looking into his eyes, seeing something there, and he realized she was alone.

“No one calls me Mex anymore, either. Folks call me Niner now.”

This surprised him. He’d heard of Niner - really, who hadn’t? She was something of a legend. “Well, I don’t figure you’ll be pleased to know what people call me,” he sighed, and thought for a moment. “But you can use the name David.”

“Made a name for yourself, David?”

He thought back to Felix and Locus and suppressed a shiver. “Something like that.” Suddenly wanting a change of conversation, he turned his eyes toward the sky. “Stars are beautiful tonight. I was just watching them.”

He felt her eyes on him, and it burned him like antiseptic.

-

Niner’s presence changed something. It wasn’t just the fact that she began bringing him along on her adventures, which he called “recoveries” because they were so similar to what he’d been doing back when even though she just called them “life”.

He slept more. And he remembered less. Sometimes, if and when she happened to wake up in the middle of the night, she would check up on him and if he was awake she would frown at him and walk away. So he slept more, and remembered less, and he lived in the present because suddenly there was something to live for.

He kept a bandana on his face during the day, so that people wouldn’t recognize him and she wouldn’t see how far away he was.

But she did anyway, because that was what she’d always done. She asked him, “What on Earth do you do all night?” and, because it was her, he had to answer honestly.

“I watch the stars,” and she looked at him, so he added, “And, I guess, I remember.”

-

She saw, and he loved. It was just how they worked.

So, when she asked him about it, he told her everything. Everything except Locus and Felix, because he was ashamed, and because she already knew just how bad it was. She didn’t need any more hints to see. She was the one who saw.

“You’re living in the past, David,” she told him, and her diagnosis was correct.

But he had to explain. He had to tell her. She had to know why. She had to know that he was in the present, and why, and when.

The moon was full. He hated that.

“‘Course I’m living in the past, Mex,” he told her, and he was begging with every word. “It’s all I have left.”

-

With her help, he grew.

It wasn’t just her that he was living in the present with. When they came across lost folk in need of help, he began interacting, enjoying his time with them as well as with her. He made new memories, and although he still retained the old ones, he began the slow process of learning that things could get better.

The strange thing was, he’d been alone for so long, and yet he’d never known how to live for himself. Niner knew that, and she showed him every day. She wasn’t a nurturing soul, but it turned out that she was exactly what he needed; she didn’t demonstrate or tell him outright, but that ended up being the best way for him to learn.

With help from the woman who never stopped moving, he finally learned how to move on - but there was nothing he could do to return the favor. There was only one person who could save old Niner, Niner, and it wasn't him.

-

He wasn’t in the past when he was with her. But she had a piece of her past waiting for her at the foot of the hill.

“Who is that?” he asked, and she didn’t answer. She just looked down at that woman in black like she was her salvation. He wanted to repeat the question, but he couldn’t.

Instead he watched the wind buffeting her hair, threatening to blow her hat right off her head, and he knew what he had to say. He knew what to tell her - not because she needed to hear it, because she knew, but because he needed to put it in words.

When the woman in black called “Howdy, Mex,” she turned to say goodbye to him.

“I love you, Niner,” he said, feeling his own tears seeping into the bandana on his face.

She blinked at him, and she didn’t say the same. He wasn’t surprised - she wasn’t the one who loved, after all. That had always been him.

No, she was the one who watched. So she told him, “Go and live your life, David,” and she watched him when he stepped away and slung himself up on Locksmith’s back.

He was a little ashamed for crying. But, just like Niner had told him, it was all a part of moving on.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Give us your vow, boy.  
> Swear to us on all you hold dear.  
> A man never goes back on his word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BLEGHHH. I'm soooo sorry this took so long!! My muse was being fussy, and then the chapter itself ended up being hecka long, so this took way longer than I intended. And I didn't even get to include everything I wanted!! Blegh. Still, I'm glad to have this out; it's technically the final chapter, but there will be an epilogue as well. So!! I hope you like it!! ^^

_Give us your vow, boy.  
Swear to us on all you hold dear._   
_A man never goes back on his word._

-

David carried on Niner’s legacy. He wandered the trails like she had, and when he came across somebody in need of help, he helped them get home and demanded nothing in return. Most of the time, they rewarded him anyway, with a single meal or cash enough to sustain him for a month. He kept the bandana on, even though his reputation as a savior was once again overshadowing the lies and truths that had built up over time.

It was hard, though, staying where he was. He still reminisced, from time to time, and it terrified him because he never knew when enough was enough. He would cut himself off from even the smallest recollections because he was so scared he wouldn’t come back. Sometimes, on nights when he was alone, he didn’t  _want_  to come back, and when that happened he’d launch himself onto Locksmith’s back and ride fast and hard until he was too tired to keep his eyes open, and only then would he allow himself to lie back on the ground.

He heard from a rare woman he was helping home that Niner had gone missing. She’d been telling him that she’d been scared of leaving because she’d rather Niner rescue her than a man, but now that she’d met him, she was no longer frightened.

“What do you mean, miss? Niner was as likely to find you as me.”

She gave him a look of astonishment. “But, David, sir, Niner’s gone. Nobody seen her since you n’ she split. I’d’a thought you knew.”

He hadn’t.

That night, he let himself remember Niner. He remembered her quietly watching him over the Freelancer fire, back when he hadn’t spoken to her all that much. He remembered their slow friendship, when he was living in the present because she wouldn’t accept anything less. He remembered their parting, and then he fell asleep. When he woke up, he was done mourning because he had to get the girl - young Emily - home. All he had time to do was wonder what had happened to her horse.

Not a week after dropping Emily off, he found his answer.

-

David was riding on a roundabout route back up to Blood Gulch, essentially skirting the very edge of the open range, when he spotted a dark mass up ahead that he immediately identified as cattle. He frowned. Trail riders, all the way out here? Not a very likely course. Maybe it was an escaped herd.

He approached slowly, so as not to alarm the creatures into stampede, and observed that there was nothing at all to contain the animals - but also that there was the orange light of a fire, sitting not all that far away from the herd. David glanced back and forth between the cows and the fire, not sure which set of evidence to believe.

Eventually, he altered his course towards the fire and slowed his approach even further; if he was approaching blindly, he’d rather have the element of surprise on his side than theirs.

When he saw the horse, he slid off Locksmith’s back and began leading because he couldn’t believe his eyes. An appaloosa. And not just any appaloosa.

“Four-Seven?” he whispered, and her ears perked up. It was Niner’s horse, alright, standing peacefully off to the side of a group of unbound steeds. Locksmith gave a quiet whinny at the sight and walked purposefully toward the mare. Perplexed, David let him go and turned once more towards the fire.

At this distance, he could see bodies - several of them, sleeping on their sides and backs and stomachs - on the ground around the low-burning fire. There was one more, with its back to him, sitting with slumped shoulders.

Unsure whether the sitting figure was sleeping or awake, David decided to sneak up from behind. Careful not to step on sticks or limbs of sleeping strangers, he guided himself forward.

Not far now. Only a couple yards…

One of the horses brayed, heart-stoppingly loud, and the person at the fire turned and looked directly at him.

David threw his hands in the air automatically, proving he was unarmed, and shouted, “I mean no harm! I’m just here to see if you’re okay!”

There was hesitation from the upright man as a couple of his companions began to stir at the sound of David’s voice, then he said, “Thank  _fuck_. Please tell me you know where the hell we are.”

“I do. I can lead you up to Blood Gulch, if you like.” He paused, then added, “My name is David Washington.”

The stranger stood and strode forward, then stuck his hand out to shake, ignoring the voices of his fellows asking what was going on.

“Leonard Church, Junior,” he introduced himself. “And if you can get us back to civilization, I will give you every goddamn cent I own. You have my word.”

-

The group Leonard was travelling with was actually composed of two smaller gangs of men, who had just so happened to both get lost in the same unfortunate area.

The one Leonard - or, as his friends called him, Church - had been leading was the smaller of the two. It was composed of Church himself, as well as two others: Church’s old neighbor and self-proclaimed “best friend”, Michael J. Caboose, and Church’s ex-servant, Lavernius Tucker. The two were friendly, friendlier than Church turned out to be, although David found himself questioning… well, a  _lot_  about them both.

“Finally, somebody to talk to who isn’t completely nuts from spending time with Caboose. And, hey, not bad looking, either.” Tucker winked at him.

Case in point.

The other group was every bit as colorful, if not more so. Their leader was an older, Southern man who talked in a loud voice, claimed to still be of Confederate allegiance, and didn’t seem to understand that when David asked his name, “Sarge” was not the answer he was seeking. There was Sarge’s “son”, a seemingly emotionless Spanish-speaking preteen boy that everyone called “Lopez” and deluded themselves into thinking they understood. Strangely enough, Lopez appeared to be the only one of the group that questioned his “father”’s right to leadership: Simmons would only voice his misgivings when out of Sarge’s earshot, Donut seemed overall not to understand the gravity of the situation - or any situation, really - and Grif… Grif didn’t seem to have much energy for anything except eating.

“We had a trail guide. Two, in fact!” Donut explained the next morning. “But, you know, some guys just don’t like hanging around after everything’s said and done. There’s nothing worse than waking up the next morning with an empty wallet and a big, gaping -”

“We got abandoned,” Grif cut in.

“Oh, Grif, you skeptic, you. I’m sure they had their reasons.”

“They left us helpless and alone in the desert, with nothing but our horses and a massive herd of cattle.”

“El tiene razon, tu sabes,” Lopez commented.

“Alright, then. So,” David turned his attention to Tucker and Church, “How did the… Blues, was it? How did you Blues end up out here?”

Church grimaced. Tucker let out a loud “Ha!” of derision. “Oh, I’ll tell you. Church, here, he swore up and down that he knew just where we were going. Fucker couldn’t even get us South. Those cattle? All the Reds’. Fucking useless.”

“Church is an excellent leader!” Caboose exclaimed. David was about to ask what his reasoning was, but the other two carried on arguing exclusively with each other. It seemed they were in the habit of ignoring him.

After taking a moment to contemplate, David interceded. “Church. How many times have you taken this route with others? How do you think it was that you got lost?”

“Taken this route?” Church scoffed, giving him a look like he was the least intelligent person he’d ever met, “I’ve never been South in my life.”

David gave him an incredulous stare. “ _What?!_ ” he blurted.

“I saw a map and shit, I knew where we were going. I just… I got turned around when we ran into the Reds. That’s all.”

For a moment, David couldn’t even find the words to express his current emotion. Finally, he ejaculated, “So you set out to go South, having never taken the trip, all alone, and none of you stopped to think it might be better to have someone along?! That’s… That is the single worst plan I have ever heard. Ever. You could have gotten yourselves killed!”

“Oh, don’t get mad at  _me!_  This is Church’s fault, I had nothing to do with it!”

“You didn’t even bother to tell him how bad an idea it was! You just blindly put your faith in him! I traveled two years with the most advanced group of cowherds in Texas, and not once -  _never,_  and some of them had been trail riding for seven years straight - did a single one of them even _insinuate_  that we could get by without a guide. And if he had, we’d have shot him down!”

“Well, what the fuck are you getting all pissed at me for?! I’m telling you, I had nothing to do with it!”

“ _I’m_  telling  _you,_  Lavernius, that you need to show some goddamn initiative and stop pushing the blame off on Church.” David realized, suddenly, just how intense the conversation had gotten. He and Tucker were directly in each other’s faces, now, and the others were completely silent.

He finished his train of thought. “You’re a team. You can’t be calling one single person out on what you’re all collectively responsible for. That’s not what a team is meant to do.”

He turned on his heel, then, and went to take a brief inventory of his saddlebags. He was standing at Locksmith’s side, poring through their contents, when he heard footsteps approaching. He turned his head, and it was Caboose.

“We are a team,” he said, quietly. “We are fighting right now, Mister New Guy, but we are a team. I promise.”

-

He stayed, even though he wasn’t sure why. They called him New Guy and treated him like one of them, even though he’d never told them he would be staying permanently. He’d told them he just wanted to make sure they didn’t get in any more danger through pure ignorance, and Tucker had snorted and said yeah right, he’d believe that when Caboose started facing the right direction on his horse without having to be told.

He wasn’t sure why he stayed, but he did, and they treated him like one of them.

So he was there, sitting at the fire, when Donut and the Reds played the song. It was about Niner, and he knew it the moment he heard it, and he observed Church carefully because he was the one riding Four-Seven. He even called her Four-Seven, just like Niner had. He saw Church’s face change slowly.

But, unlike Church, the song wasn’t the part that disturbed him completely. It was only after Church asked “Where did you hear that song?” that New Guy was jarred.

“Our old trail guides, of course!” Donut chirped, “Locus and Felix!”

It was like a punch to the gut. Locus and Felix were the ones who had abandoned the Reds? Why was he even surprised by this? That they were still out there, still plundering and murdering innocents, should not have surprised him as much as it did.

Thank god almighty, New Guy thought to himself. Thank god almighty the Reds were alive.

He lost track of the conversation for a moment, because it was about Niner and none of it particularly surprised him - he’d known she was a legend, after all, and so it was all but irrelevant for him to hear. He tuned in again, however, just in time to hear the critical component.

“We know the girl it’s about,” Tucker said, and this changed everything.

It wasn’t only New Guy, either. There was the sound all around the fire of breath catching and clothing rustling as everyone shifted to stare at Church and Tucker. “You met Niner?” Sarge exclaimed, “How in all hell did you get out alive?!”

Church rolled his eyes, and New Guy suppressed the urge to follow suit. “She’s not a killer, Sarge. She never was and never will be.”

Yes, New Guy agreed silently, but how do _you_  know that?

The Reds were trying to reason out the how and why. He heard Grif, of all people, speak up. “But the song said she ‘learned from a killer’. If that’s true, why isn’t she one, herself?”

His mind darted to Locus and Felix, and then to Northerner Daniel, and as if on reflex he fixed his gaze on the stars. “One facet of a person doesn’t always determine everything they are,” he muttered, feeling oddly as if he had to refute their misconceptions.

“Exactly,” Church agreed. New Guy wondered if he really understood, or if he was bluffing. “Maybe she was scary. But she also raised me - yes, raised me - better than my father ever could have. And I’d just like to say, she taught me everything there is to know about sass.”

This piqued his interest. Lopez drawled something he didn’t understand, but Caboose reprimanded him before he had an opportunity; “Be quiet, please. I would like to hear Church’s story.”

“I agree with Caboose,” he put forward quickly, and just as quickly looked at Church. “If you don’t mind, that is.”

Church smiled at him weakly, and then looked away. He looked uncertain.

“You know, Church’s horse is actually hers,” Tucker helped him along, and sent a sidelong glance at New Guy. Yes. This was what he was curious about. He flashed a grin of his own at Tucker, which was promptly returned.

So he listened to Church’s side of the story, which turned out to coincide almost perfectly with the pieces that New Guy was missing - barring, of course, the details of Niner’s disappearance. But at least he understood Church’s connection with her, now. That was a step forward.

When Church finished, Simmons, Grif, Caboose and Lopez were already asleep, and Tucker, Sarge and Donut were well on their way.

It was bizarre. He’d been sleeping so well, lately, but he couldn’t even imagine falling asleep at this juncture. Instead, he saw the sour note in Church’s face and wondered what had placed it there.

“Well, Church,” he said, and the man’s eyes were on him, “If anyone is worthy of riding Niner’s horse, I daresay it’s you.”

He heard Tucker snort again, but it was worth it for the peaceful-for-once expression on Church’s countenance.

-

He stayed for weeks, and he didn’t have much complaint when weeks turned to months, or when months turned into a year, or when they collectively decided that it was time to settle down. He went with them, Northwest, to distant recently-acquired territories where laws were more practical than going as far as outlawing homosexual activity. A certain peace seemed to overtake a few particular members of the group at this revelation.

Their first summer was spent building up the ranch; it wasn’t as big a job as it would have been if they’d built it all themselves, but there were reparations enough that it took a good long while before they could call it proper and good enough to house themselves as well as the sheep they had on order.

Even then, they didn’t have enough time before winter to get enough rooms habitable, so Wash - as they’d begun to call him - ended up sharing with Tucker.

It wasn’t a problem. Not really. In fact, they got along just fine until it finally occurred to Wash that he had a permanent address and it was long past time to tell Connie as much.

-

“Looks like Simmons is back from the post office,” Donut commented cheerfully, shifting his armload of grain to one side in order to wave. The man took notice and waved back, altering his course in order to reach them.

“Package for you, Wash,” he called, and Wash stood up straight from filling the trough.

“Go on, then,” Donut bid him, waving him away. “I can handle the rest of this by myself. I expect you’ll give me a peek of what’s inside your package later!”

“Thank you, Donut,” Wash said, and turned away to meet Simmons by their front porch, where he was dismounting his horse.

“Here you go,” Simmons said, and handed him the box. Wash nodded his thanks and headed inside.

The kitchen table was unoccupied - they were having stew for dinner to stave off the oncoming cold weather, so Grif was likely letting it cook on its own - so he placed the package on top of it and began unwrapping the brown paper. A letter slipped out, and he picked it up after recognizing that the box was an ordinary old women’s hatbox.

The writing on the letter was too uniform to be Connie’s. He glanced at the return address and saw that it was from a Mr. Terrance Weicker. Connie’s brother, he realized.

Suddenly, he wanted very much not to open the letter. But it was there, and nothing was stopping him from doing it, so he popped the seal and slid it out with a queer numbness in his chest.

He read it. And then he realized he had no idea what it said, so he read it again.

 

_Dearest David,_

_I am terribly sorry to be informing you of this through the mail, but I am afraid that my sister Constance is incapable of replying to your letter. She did write you, countless times, over the years, even if she did not send them on to your uncle as originally planned. I have included these letters in the very same hatbox she herself kept them in._

_I am sorry, David. My sister married a number of years ago to a man she felt no love for. He was a jealous creature, and alas, when he learned of her affair, he_

 

“Beat her to death,” David whispered, his eyes frozen on the words on the page before him.

There was more in the letter. There was plenty more. It was a long, long document, and there was undoubtedly explanations and apologies and reassurances galore, all of them from his first lover but not the ones he needed.

Connie was supposed to be the strong one. She was supposed to be the one who was always there and never changed.

He grabbed the box and he ran to the room he shared with Tucker and he hurled it against the wall. It burst open like a firecracker, and there was paper and envelopes and various paraphernalia falling, fluttering through the air as he fell to his knees and sobbed and grabbed and grabbed at it, all of it.

He clutched the letters he managed to catch to his chest and fell to the floor, arms wrapped around himself as he cried and screamed like he hadn’t since the cliff. He could hear frantic footsteps and frantic voices and he could feel hands on him, trying to comfort him, but it was futile. He was in the past, re-living the entire first seventeen years of his life, every moment spent with his lifelong friend.

And he’d been doing so  _well,_  too.

-

“Get up.”

He was lying on his side, curled around himself and his armful of letters.

“Get up,” Tucker said, “You’re in the way.”

He sobbed weakly.

David could hear Tucker sigh. Then there was rustling, and light. Tucker had lit a candle. It was nighttime.

More rustling. This time, it was raspy. Paper. Tucker was picking up the letters that were scattered on the floor, on their beds, on the drawers.

“They go in this box, right?” Tucker asked.

He was too busy remembering the plots he and Connie had made to run away to the Open Range to answer.

-

He woke up the next morning before Tucker did and saw that the near-full hatbox was sitting on his own unoccupied bed. He solemnly placed the wrinkled letters that he’d been holding through the night inside, and then he quietly exited the room.

There was someone in the kitchen. Donut. He looked up at Wash, and he spared a careful smile.

“Coffee?” he offered. Wash nodded, not trusting his voice. He sat at the table. Terrance’s letter was still sitting there. He pretended it wasn’t.

The cup clinked against its saucer as Donut placed it in front of him.

“Thanks,” Wash croaked. His voice was scratchy. Probably from the screaming.

“No problem.”

They sat there in companionable silence. Eventually, Donut glanced behind him, quickly, and then he began to speak.

“I lived with a man in Iowa,” he told Wash. “His name was Frank DuFresne. He was studying to be a doctor.”

His hands fidgeted above his coffee cup. Wash watched them, wondering where this was going.

“He really was wonderful, Wash. So much… He was so much  _kinder_  than my parents. I’m sure you know about this sort of thing, even if you haven’t gone through it. They didn’t like having a fairy boy.”

Wash nodded limply.

“Wash, I…”

There was a tiny sort of splashing sound. Wash looked, and Donut was crying into his coffee.

“I’m sorry,” Donut mumbled. “I, ah… I had so much more to say. I promise I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“It’s alright,” Wash told him.

“It’s hard,” he said. “It’s so  _hard,_  sometimes, that it hurts. But, Wash, you can’t let it break your heart.” He coughed. “That’s all, I guess.”

Wash observed him carefully, but the tears were already gone, replaced with that familiar, brilliant Donut smile.

“Thank you, Donut.”

-

David wasn’t sleeping well. No matter how he tried, every time he closed his eyelids he found Connie printed on the backs of them. Connie, smiling or frowning, four years old or sixteen. She was there constantly, and he berated himself for it.

He tried asking himself, just once, what Niner would think if she could see him now, but that made it worse and not better. She was there now, too, and he asked himself again and again where she was. How had he allowed that to happen? Why had he left her on top of that hill?

And because he was remembering her, he went right ahead and remembered the Freelancers, too. Why not? He’d regressed this far, already. Niner would already be ashamed of him. Why not?

So he asked himself the pointless sort of questions only those stranded in the past would ask themselves. Why had he ran when they were taking Big Man? Why hadn’t he stopped Reggie and Butch from leaving? Why had he let Yank go?

What had they been doing atop that cliff in the first place?

He lay awake every night, asking himself these questions, and he dragged his feet during the day. He told the Reds and Blues that he’d never been one much for the winter season, in the first place, and some bought it better than others.

One night, he heard Tucker sit up. And he heard him turn to face him.

“I know you’re awake,” he said.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

He heard Tucker sigh, in that way he did. It wasn’t a sigh, not really, but it was always in the places where a sigh would be. It was more like a huff, or a snort.

“That’s not what I want,” Tucker told him.

“What do you want, then?”

“I want you to get some fucking sleep. You look dead, half the time. It’s like… It’s like you’re not even here anymore.”

Wash paused to consider this. “I guess,” he murmured.

Tucker didn’t say anything for a moment. Wash listened to him breathe.

“Look,” Tucker finally broke the silence, “I didn’t like you at first. But at least you were  _here._  That’s what we needed, you know? We just needed you to be  _here,_  because without you we’d all be dead. Seriously.”

Wash let out a soft “hmm” of laughter. Tucker seemed to take inspiration from this.

“But that… we don’t need you for survival, anymore, so I guess that means we want you around. And we don’t want  _you_  to be  _here,_  with your  _mind_  hovering around butt-fuck nowhere. We want you to be here, always, and laughing and having fun like we do.”

Tucker was standing now, and Wash was sitting up. In the dim moonlight coming in through the window, Wash could see Tucker’s face. He was smiling, sort of. Wash returned the gesture.

“Thanks, Tucker,” he said. “I’ll try.”

And then Tucker climbed into Wash’s bed with him, and they lay together, and in the split second before he fell asleep, Wash heard Tucker whisper, “If I catch you awake before noon tomorrow, I’ll rope you to the bed. That's a guarantee."

-

Church’s brother, Eastwood, stayed over that spring. Not that any idle observer would be able to tell, of course; East never emerged from the room that he was temporarily sharing with Church, and the only hints to his presence were in the occasional comments made about East by the Reds and Blues.

Tucker was surprisingly quiet about the situation. He was rarely quiet about much of anything, and certainly not when he had an opinion of his own on the matter, which, as Wash verified, he did.

“I remember him when I was helping around their house, you know?” he put aside to Wash one night, “He was so…  _chipper,_  I guess. He’s so different, now.”

“That’s hard to imagine.”

“I know. That’s why I’m so freaked out about it. I don’t even know what there is to say.”

They lay in silence for a couple minutes. Just when Wash thought the topic had died, Tucker spoke up again.

“I wanna talk to him, but I feel weird about it.”

“I could try,” Wash thought aloud, “Maybe he’d feel better talking to a neutral party.”

“Do it,” Tucker said automatically, and those were the final words either of them spoke before falling asleep.

-

The next day, immediately upon returning from his errands in town, Wash asked Church if he could talk to East.

“Go ahead if you think it’ll do anything,” Church replied, an expression of thorough exasperation plastered all over him. So Wash nodded and headed inside, through the hall, and up to Church’s door, stopping only to say hello to Grif as he passed through the kitchen. He hesitated for a moment or two, heard Grif calling after him to ask what he was doing, and then knocked.

There was silence, and then the door creaked open, revealing the ghostly pale face of Eastwood Church in the doorway. Wash was struck by just how similar he and Leonard looked.

“I was hoping we could talk,” he said, and East shrugged and stalked back to sit on his bed. Taking this as an invitation, Wash followed, closed the door, and sat on Leonard’s bed, facing East.

The boy automatically took up one of his books and a pen and began scribbling in it, just as if Wash wasn’t even there. Wash allowed this, and he waited to speak until East shut the book and looked at him. It took a while, possibly an hour or even two, before it happened, but he waited, and he was rewarded with East’s eyes on him.

“Why do you stay in here all the time?” Wash inquired. “Wouldn’t you rather go outside? It’s not much, but we’ve got some great fields around here. They’re not even that muddy, given the season.”

East’s eyes darted to the window. He stared for a long moment, then slowly shook his head. When Wash glanced after where he’d been looking, he saw Church, nudging one slow, wooly sheep toward the barn. It was dusk.

“Is it Church?” he asked carefully.

East took up his book again and started writing. Wash allowed it, just as he had earlier, and only disturbed the boy to ask if he wanted to light the gas lamps, at which he received a shake of the head. The room was near pitch dark, but the moon was full, so if East leaned forward into the light, he still had enough light to work by.

“What do you write about?” Wash asked, finally.

“Memories,” East replied automatically. It was the first word he’d spoken the entire evening.

Wash breathed. Then he said, “I used to do that.”

East looked at him, and somehow he seemed genuinely interested at last.

“Every night. I wouldn’t sleep. I’d just lay awake and remember things the way they used to be.”

East nodded again, slowly like the last time.

“That’s not proper living, East,” Wash told him. “Just remembering, that’s not living. You live to make memories, not re-live them.”

“Tell me about the last week,” East challenged him.

Without hesitating, Wash launched in. “Last Sunday, I -”

“Not  _you,_ ” East said. “Tell me about the others. What was Grif doing on Sunday? Sarge? Caboose?”

“I - what?”

“What memories did you make with them?”

Wash swallowed. It felt like there was a boulder in his throat.

“You’re a fucking hypocrite,” East hissed. “Don’t pretend like it’s so easy. Don’t tell me to just drop it. Don’t you fucking try, when you’re not even making any new memories yourself. You’re stuck just as bad as I am.”

“I’m not,” Wash said, hearing the uncertain note in his own voice. “My old friend, Niner, she t-taught me -”

In the moonlight, East was a snake. His voice was low and raspy and his eyes were slits. “Great,  _your old friend Niner_  taught you something. What about those other ones? You know, the ones you live with? Did you ever even bother talking to them about it? Did you even  _try?_ ”

Wash was choking.

“You’re just a sad little jackass, like me,” East spat, “You’re just a sad little jackass that can’t pull his head out of his own bullshit long enough to see how fucked up he is.”

Wash was moving, running, out the door, past the living room, outside. He needed to be out of there, outside, where he was safe and the stars were there.

There, that patch of grass. He fell onto his back and lay there, staring upward, and there was North and there was Yank and he was resting his head on North’s arm and Yank was asleep on his stomach and North was pointing at constellations and telling him all about them and their stories and he could feel the slow rumble of North’s voice vibrating through him and Yank’s breath fluttering against his clothes and the tiny sliver of his stomach exposed by his shirt when it rode up and

And there was Tucker, blocking out the sky, blocking the moon - the full moon, he hated that - and he was talking, saying his name. Not Rookie Boy. Never Rookie Boy, not from Tucker.

“Wash,” he said, and Wash felt the word disturb the air and his hair and something deep inside him.

He felt the tears trickling down the planes of his cheeks, pooling in the shells of his ears. Where had those come from? He wiped them away, and Tucker, seeming satisfied, sat up next to him.

“Church is looking at us,” Tucker informed him, and waved. Wash sat up and did likewise, watching the light-framed figure in the doorway until he disappeared back inside.

They sat there together, facing the house. They were on a slight incline, Wash noticed, that allowed them to view the sky and the barn and the distant woodlands. The moon, the full moon, framed it all.

“Pretty,” Tucker commented, and Wash looked at him.

There was a shine to Tucker’s face, when he was under the full moon. The whites of his eyes, and his teeth, and the highlights of his skin glowed, contrasting with the midnight of the rest of his skin. The effect was kind of like a night sky, Wash reflected, if you turned your head and squinted.

It made him think. That light, the light that ringed Tucker and made him glowing and beautiful, was from the full moon.

He hated the full moon. Why was that? One - two - three foul full moon nights, and for some reason that meant its light was inherently cruel. Evil, even. Why was that?

He thought back, and he remembered as many full moon nights as he could conjure up. He remembered watching the harvest moon rise with Connie. He remembered several nights of stargazing with York and with North. He even remembered sitting with the Reds and Blues under its light.

Those memories weren’t cruel, and neither was the full moon.

Tucker was looking back at him, now.

“Sorry,” Wash said, for no reason.

Tucker shrugged. “Whatever. What did you and East talk about?”

“Memories,” Wash said.

“Bad ones?”

“Kind of.”

He was gazing at the moon, and his lips were pursed like he was thinking. He inhaled deeply, and then he said, “Well, Wash, whatever happened to you back then, whatever it is you’re always remembering, just… don’t forget us. Okay? Make me that promise. And I won’t forget you. I swear it.”

Wash looked at him. And then he slowly lay back in the grass, looked up at the stars, and, one last time, he remembered them the way they’d always been. He remembered North’s face, and Yank’s, and their voices. He remembered Yank’s final words, one last time.

_Please let me go, David. You’ve got to let me go._

And so, as Tucker lay down with him, he finally did.

"You have my word, Tucker," he breathed into the other man's skin.


	7. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This here’s the ballad of a man.  
> Who sang?  
> Who fell?  
> Who watched?  
> Who swore?  
> Who ran  
> and ran  
> and ran?  
> All I ever saw was a Man  
> who Loved with all his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, sorry to you AO3 users for the early post. Regardless... here's the end. I'm going to miss Wash, but I think I'm ready for something new. To Wash; I'm glad I could have this journey with you. I hope you have a happy life. :)

_This here’s the ballad of a man._   
_Who sang?_   
_Who fell?_   
_Who watched?_   
_Who swore?_   
_Who ran_   
_and ran_   
_and ran?_   
_All I ever saw was a Man_   
_who Loved with all his heart._

**-**

Wash was, oddly, the only one in the office. This was an exceedingly rare occurrence, and only resulted from a series of coincidences:

First, Church had taken ill - as he often did, these days - and he and his unofficial caretaker Caboose were shut up in their shared room for the day.

Second, their usual office assistant, Miss Katie Jensen, was out for her weekly break, and young Smith had begged off to spend the day with her.

Third, Bitters and Palomo were teaming up in order to get the hard, dirty yardwork done that Smith and sometimes Caboose typically did entirely on their own.

Fourth, Sarge and Lopez were staking out their plans for expanding the barn.

Fifth, the rest of the Reds were in town at the Farmer’s Market - Simmons and Donut hawking their woolly wares while Grif went on the hunt for ingredients.

And, of course, Tucker was watching the sheep. That wasn’t entirely coincidental, but it did mean that Wash was the only one left to man the office. They’d started offering horseback riding lessons, so the office - with its planners and schedules and maps of their land and its trails - was now a necessary evil.

He was just considering whether they’d have to send the sheep in early so that Tucker would be free to give Missus Kimball her lesson that evening when the knock came at the door. He stood quickly from his desk and approached the door, wondering who would possibly have time to take on another riding student - maybe Bitters would be willing to help on that front at last…

The boy at the door could easily have been a younger version of his father. He was just barely shorter, and lankier with that stretched-out look of the recently grown, and his hair was longer, styled differently. One of his eyes was brown. But, truly, it was as if he was looking at a seventeen-year-old version of Northerner Daniel.

“Hi,” the boy said, breathlessly, then corrected, “Uh, hello. I-is this the, uh, the residence of a Mister David Washington?”

“Yours truly,” Wash greeted, and finally glanced past the boy to take in the stern-looking, mousy sort of man in green who appeared to be a few years older than himself, and the other. “To whom do I owe this pleasure?”

“Oh! Oh, um,” the boy stammered, then gestured to himself. “Me, my name is Theodore Kovalevsky, and this here, this is my friend Delaney. East said he’d’a met you.”

It was impossible. This was impossible. He extended his hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

He shook with Theodore, and then with Delaney. Delaney mumbled a halfhearted greeting.

Theodore stood awkwardly by, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders somewhere around his ears. “I was, uh,” he began when the introductions were complete, and he timidly met Wash’s eyes. “I w-was hopin’ you’d know where my Pa was.”

Wash took a moment to consider this. He took a deep breath, and then released it.

“Come on in, then,” he eventually said, and asked, “Would you like some coffee? Or tea?”

Delaney said quietly, “Tea, please,” and Theodore nodded his agreement. Wash guided the visitors to the kitchen table and set about preparing tea for them. He set out the three cups and his own, and when the kettle whistled, he poured it out for them all.

“Thank you”s and “My pleasure”s were exchanged, and they sat for a moment.

Finally, Wash looked at Theodore. “Your father thought you were dead,” he said, before he could reconsider it.

Theodore nodded. “Me, too. Me, I near thought so, too.” He gave a small, lopsided smile. “But my Pa, he useta take me out huntin’, back when I was real little. He taught me all about this thing called a possum that pretends like it’s dead when there’s danger, so I went n’ did the same. When Aunty Dana shot me n’ I wasn’t dead, I just pretended like I was. I kept on pretendin’ right ‘til my Pa -” he stopped, suddenly, and stared at his tea. “‘Til he, ah. ‘Til he ran away. N’ then I started cryin’ n’ yellin’, n’ the neighbors they heard n’ they came n’ helped me.”

“How did you survive?” Wash asked.

Theodore reached up and pulled back his bangs to show Wash the white knot of a scar. “It grazed my brain. Fer awhile, I couldn’t feel nothin’ down in my feet n’ my toes, n’ I couldn’t remember many new things, but I got better.” His hand came down and so did his hair. “I don’t talk so well, but that’s more ‘cuz nobody ever taught me,” he joked weakly, and glanced at Delaney.

“That’s terrible, Teddy,” Wash whispered, and Theodore flinched.

“I’d rather it if you dint call me that. See, my Pa, he called me that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Theodore fidgeted a little in his seat, and then he said, “Listen, I know my Pa killed my Aunt. N’ I know he was a fairy like you.”

For the first time in a long while, Wash felt shame color his face at that description. “That’s true.”

“N’ I know you two, you were together with Delaney’s friend. But I, I just.” He glanced at Delaney once more, and scratched his head. “I w-wanted to say… I wanted to tell him, it’s okay. It’s okay, n’ I still want him to be my Pa, n’ I still wanna be his son. That’s all I wanted to say.” He looked at Wash again, pleading with his eyes. “I was hopin’ you could tell me where he was, so I could tell him that.”

The pain was like a lance through his heart. He shakily took a sip of tea, to give himself something to do while he gathered his thoughts.

He settled on the truth.

“I’m sorry, Theodore. Your father is dead. And, Delaney, your friend…”

“Neil,” Delaney provided, looking sick.

“He is, too. Daniel killed himself and Neil followed him.”

Tears were rolling down Theodore’s cheeks. Delaney just stared numbly at his hands.

“H-how did he…” Theodore began to ask, and Delaney put a hand on his shoulder.

“Fresh air,” the man murmured, and stood, taking Theodore with him.

When Wash heard the front door open and close, he turned to his remaining visitor.

“Why would you go and do something like that, East?” he asked.

Eastwood Church gazed somberly at him.

“I wanted to apologize. To you, and to my brother. And I wanted to help them.”

“I don’t see how that helps anything.”

“They were living in the past,” East rasped, turning his eyes to the door. “I wanted to…” He stopped.

Wash watched him and sighed. “You mean well, East.”

He nodded.

“You’re too harsh, sometimes.”

“You’re the one who broke it to them.”

“I guess you’re right.”

East looked at him out of the corner of his eye and smiled. “I’m glad to see you’re here, Wash.”

“Me, too, East.”

The younger man stood. It occurred to Wash, strangely, that he was twenty-eight, the same age Northerner Daniel had been when they’d met. He hadn’t even thought of that on his birthday.

They strode to the door together, and Wash observed as East rejoined the boy and the man and the strange red-headed woman that were waiting for him. The woman looked back at him with green eyes, then turned away.

Wash looked past them, at the field with the sheep in it, and saw the distant figure of Lavernius Tucker, waving energetically at him.

As the small group rode away, Wash decided that he’d had quite enough of the office for one day and climbed down the porch steps to join his love.

 


End file.
